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Woodstock; or, The Cavalier

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> Woodstock; or, The Cavalier




"Nay, that wretched puritan's garb of mine is hardly worth brushing,"
said Wildrake; "and but for this hundred-weight of rusty iron, with
which thou hast bedizened me, I look more like a bankrupt Quaker than
anything else. But I'll make _you_ as spruce as ever was a canting rogue
of your party."

So saying, and humming at the same time the cavalier tune,--

"Though for a time we see Whitehall
With cobwebs hung around the wall,
Yet Heaven shall make amends for all.
When the King shall enjoy his own again."--

"Thou forgettest who are without," said Colonel Everard.

"No--I remember who are within," replied his friend. "I only sing to my
merry goblins, who will like me all the better for it. Tush, man, the
devils are my _bonos socios_, and when I see them, I will warrant they
prove such roaring boys as I knew when I served under Lunford and
Goring, fellows with long nails that nothing escaped, bottomless
stomachs, that nothing filled,--mad for pillaging, ranting, drinking,
and fighting,--sleeping rough on the trenches, and dying stubbornly in
their boots. Ah! those merry days are gone. Well, it is the fashion to
make a grave face on't among cavaliers, and specially the parsons that
have lost their tithe-pigs; but I was fitted for the element of the
time, and never did or can desire merrier days than I had during that
same barbarous, bloody, and unnatural rebellion."

"Thou wert ever a wild sea-bird, Roger, even according to your name;
liking the gale better than the calm, the boisterous ocean better than
the smooth lake, and your rough, wild struggle against the wind, than
daily food, ease and quiet."

"Pshaw! a fig for your smooth lake, and your old woman to feed me with
brewer's grains, and the poor drake obliged to come swattering whenever
she whistles! Everard, I like to feel the wind rustle against my
pinions,--now diving, now on the crest of the wave, now in ocean, now in
sky--that is the wild-drake's joy, my grave one! And in the Civil War so
it went with us--down in one county, up in another, beaten to-day,
victorious tomorrow--now starving in some barren leaguer--now revelling
in a Presbyterian's pantry--his cellars, his plate-chest, his old
judicial thumb-ring, his pretty serving-wench, all at command!"

"Hush, friend," said Everard; "remember I hold that persuasion." "More
the pity, Mark, more the pity," said Wildrake; "but, as you say, it is
needless talking of it. Let us e'en go and see how your Presbyterian
pastor, Mr. Holdenough, has fared, and whether he has proved more able
to foil the foul Fiend than have you his disciple and auditor."

They left the apartment accordingly, and were overwhelmed with the
various incoherent accounts of sentinels and others, all of whom had
seen or heard something extraordinary in the course of the night. It is
needless to describe particularly the various rumours which each
contributed to the common stock, with the greater alacrity that in such
cases there seems always to be a sort of disgrace in not having seen or
suffered as much as others.

The most moderate of the narrators only talked of sounds like the mewing
of a cat, or the growling of a dog, especially the squeaking of a pig.
They heard also as if it had been nails driven and saws used, and the
clashing of fetters, and the rustling of silk gowns, and the notes of
music, and in short all sorts of sounds which have nothing to do with
each other. Others swore they had smelt savours of various kinds,
chiefly bituminous, indicating a Satanic derivation; others did not
indeed swear, but protested, to visions of men in armour, horses without
heads, asses with horns, and cows with six legs, not to mention black
figures, whose cloven hoofs gave plain information what realm they
belonged to.

But these strongly-attested cases of nocturnal disturbances among the
sentinels had been so general as to prevent alarm and succour on any
particular point, so that those who were on duty called in vain on the
_corps-de-garde_, who were trembling on their own post; and an alert
enemy might have done complete execution on the whole garrison. But amid
this general _alerte_, no violence appeared to be meant, and annoyance,
not injury, seemed to have been the goblins' object, excepting in the
case of one poor fellow, a trooper, who had followed Harrison in half
his battles, and now was sentinel in that very vestibule upon which
Everard had recommended them to mount a guard. He had presented his
carabine at something which came suddenly upon him, when it was wrested
out of his hands, and he himself knocked down with the butt-end of it.
His broken head, and the drenched bedding of Desborough, upon whom a tub
of ditch-water had been emptied during his sleep, were the only pieces
of real evidence to attest the disturbances of the night.

The reports from Harrison's apartment were, as delivered by the grave
Master Tomkins, that truly the General had passed the night undisturbed,
though there was still upon him a deep sleep, and a folding of the hands
to slumber; from which Everard argued that the machinators had esteemed
Harrison's part of the reckoning sufficiently paid off on the preceding
evening.

He then proceeded to the apartment doubly garrisoned by the worshipful
Desborough, and the philosophical Bletson. They were both up and
dressing themselves; the former open-mouthed in his feeling of fear and
suffering. Indeed, no sooner had Everard entered, than the ducked and
dismayed Colonel made a dismal complaint of the way he had spent the
night, and murmured not a little against his worshipful kinsman for
imposing a task upon him which inferred so much annoyance.

"Could not his Excellency, my kinsman Noll," he said, "have given his
poor relative and brother-in-law a sop somewhere else than out of this
Woodstock, which seems to be the devil's own porridge-pot? I cannot sup
broth with the devil; I have no long spoon--not I. Could he not have
quartered me in some quiet corner, and given this haunted place to some
of his preachers and prayers, who know the Bible as well as the
muster-roll? whereas I know the four hoofs of a clean-going nag, or the
points of a team of oxen, better than all the books of Moses. But I will
give it over, at once and for ever; hopes of earthly gain shall never
make me run the risk of being carried away bodily by the devil, besides
being set upon my head one whole night, and soused with ditch-water the
next--No, no; I am too wise for that."

Master Bletson had a different part to act. He complained of no personal
annoyances; on the contrary, he declared he should have slept as well as
ever he did in his life but for the abominable disturbances around him,
of men calling to arms every half hour, when so much as a cat trotted by
one of their posts--He would rather, he said, "have slept among a whole
sabaoth of witches, if such creatures could be found."

"Then you think there are no such things as apparitions, Master
Bletson?" said Everard. "I used to be sceptical on the subject; but, on
my life, to-night has been a strange one."

"Dreams, dreams, dreams, my simple Colonel," said Bletson, though, his
pale face and shaking limbs belied the assumed courage with which he
spoke. "Old Chaucer, sir, hath told us the real moral on't--He was an
old frequenter of the forest of Woodstock, here"--

"Chaser?" said Desborough; "some huntsman, belike, by his name. Does he
walk, like Hearne at Windsor?"

"Chaucer," said Bletson, "my dear Desborough, is one of those wonderful
fellows, as Colonel Everard knows, who live many a hundred years after
they are buried, and whose words haunt our ears after their bones are
long mouldered in the dust."

"Ay, ay! well," answered Desborough, to whom this description of the old
poet was unintelligible--"I for one desire his room rather than his
company; one of your conjurors, I warrant him. But what says he to the
matter?"

"Only a slight spell, which I will take the freedom to repeat to Colonel
Everard," said Bletson; "but which would be as bad as Greek to thee,
Desborough. Old Geoffrey lays the whole blame of our nocturnal
disturbance on superfluity of humours,

'Which causen folk to dred in their dreams
Of arrowes, and of fire with red gleams,
Right as the humour of melancholy
Causeth many a man in sleep to cry
For fear of great bulls and bears black,
And others that black devils will them take.'"

While he was thus declaiming, Everard observed a book sticking out from
beneath the pillow of the bed lately occupied by the honourable member.

"Is that Chaucer?" he said, making to the volume; "I would like to look
at the passage"--

"Chaucer?" said Bletson, hastening to interfere; "no--that is Lucretius,
my darling Lucretius. I cannot let you see it; I have some private
marks."

But by this time Everard had the book in his hand. "Lucretius?" he said;
"no, Master Bletson, this is not Lucretius, but a fitter comforter in
dread or in danger--Why should you be ashamed of it? Only, Bletson,
instead of resting your head, if you can but anchor your heart upon this
volume, it may serve you in better stead than Lucretius or Chaucer
either."

"Why, what book is it?" said Bletson, his pale cheek colouring with the
shame of detection. "Oh! the Bible!" throwing it down contemptuously;
"some book of my fellow Gibeon's; these Jews have been always
superstitious--ever since Juvenal's time, thou knowest--

"'Qualiacunque voles Judaei somnia vendunt.'

"He left me the old book for a spell, I warrant you; for 'tis a
well-meaning fool."

"He would scarce have left the New Testament as well as the Old," said
Everard. "Come, my dear Bletson, do not be ashamed of the wisest thing
you ever did in your life, supposing you took your Bible in an hour of
apprehension, with a view to profit by the contents."

Bletson's vanity was so much galled that it overcame his constitutional
cowardice. His little thin fingers quivered for eagerness, his neck and
cheeks were as red as scarlet, and his articulation was as thick and
vehement as--in short, as if he had been no philosopher.

"Master Everard," he said, "you are a man of the sword, sir; and, sir,
you seem to suppose yourself entitled to say whatever comes into your
mind with respect to civilians, sir. But I would have you remember, sir,
that there are bounds beyond which human patience may be urged, sir--and
jests which no man of honour will endure, sir--and therefore I expect an
apology for your present language, Colonel Everard, and this unmannerly
jesting, sir--or you may chance to hear from me in a way that will not
please you."

Everard could not help smiling at this explosion of valour, engendered
by irritated self-love.

"Look you, Master Bletson," he said, "I have been a soldier, that is
true, but I was never a bloody-minded one; and, as a Christian, I am
unwilling to enlarge the kingdom of darkness by sending a new vassal
thither before his time. If Heaven gives you time to repent, I see no
reason why my hand should deprive you of it, which, were we to have a
rencontre, would be your fate in the thrust of a sword, or the pulling
of a trigger--I therefore prefer to apologise; and I call Desborough, if
he has recovered his wits, to bear evidence that I _do_ apologise for
having suspected you, who are completely the slave of your own vanity,
of any tendency, however slight, towards grace or good sense. And I
farther apologise for the time that I have wasted in endeavouring to
wash an Ethiopian white, or in recommending rational enquiry to a
self-willed atheist."

Bletson, overjoyed at the turn the matter had taken--for the defiance
was scarce out of his mouth ere he began to tremble for the
consequences--answered with great eagerness and servility of
manner,--"Nay, dearest Colonel, say no more of it--an apology is all
that is necessary among men of honour--it neither leaves dishonour with
him who asks it, nor infers degradation on him who makes it."

"Not such an apology as I have made, I trust," said the Colonel.

"No, no--not in the least," answered Bletson,--"one apology serves me
just as well as another, and Desborough will bear witness you have made
one, and that is all there can be said on the subject."

"Master Desborough and you," rejoined the Colonel, "will take care how
the matter is reported, I dare say; and I only recommend to both, that,
if mentioned at all, it may be told correctly."

"Nay, nay, we will not mention it at all," said Bletson, "we will forget
it from this moment. Only, never suppose me capable of superstitious
weakness. Had I been afraid of an apparent and real danger--why such
fear is natural to man--and I will not deny that the mood of mind may
have happened to me as well as to others. But to be thought capable of
resorting to spells, and sleeping with books under my pillow to secure
myself against ghosts,--on my word, it was enough to provoke one to
quarrel, for the moment, with his very best friend.--And now, Colonel,
what is to be done, and how is our duty to be executed at this accursed
place? If I should get such a wetting as Desborough's, why I should die
of catarrh, though you see it hurts him no more than a bucket of water
thrown over a post-horse. You are, I presume, a brother in our
commission,--how are you of opinion we should proceed?"

"Why, in good time here comes Harrison," said Everard, "and I will lay
my commission from the Lord-General before you all; which, as you see,
Colonel Desborough, commands you to desist from acting on your present
authority, and intimates his pleasure accordingly, that you withdraw
from this place."

Desborough took the paper and examined the signature.--"It is Noll's
signature sure enough," said he, dropping his under jaw; "only, every
time of late he has made the _Oliver_ as large as a giant, while the
_Cromwell_ creeps after like a dwarf, as if the surname were like to
disappear one of these days altogether. But is his Excellency, our
kinsman, Noll Cromwell (since he has the surname yet) so unreasonable as
to think his relations and friends are to be set upon their heads till
they have the crick in their neck--drenched as if they had been plunged
in a horse-pond--frightened, day and night, by all sort of devils,
witches, and fairies, and get not a penny of smart-money? Adzooks,
(forgive me for swearing,) if that's the case I had better home to my
farm, and mind team and herd, than dangle after such a thankless person,
though I _have_ wived his sister. She was poor enough when I took her,
for as high as Noll holds his head now."

"It is not my purpose," said Bletson, "to stir debate in this honourable
meeting; and no one will doubt the veneration and attachment which I
bear to our noble General, whom the current of events, and his own
matchless qualities of courage and constancy, have raised so high in
these deplorable days.--If I were to term him a direct and immediate
emanation of the ANIMUS MUNDI itself--something which Nature had
produced in her proudest hour, while exerting herself, as is her law,
for the preservation of the creatures to whom she has given existence--
should scarce exhaust the ideas which I entertain of him. Always
protesting that I am by no means to be held as admitting, but merely as
granting for the sake of argument, the possible existence of that
species of emanation, or exhalation, from the ANIMUS MUNDI, of which I
have made mention. I appeal to you, Colonel Desborough, who are his
Excellency's relation--to you, Colonel Everard, who hold the dearer
title of his friend, whether I have overrated my zeal in his behalf?"

Everard bowed at this pause, but Desborough gave a more complete
authentication. "Nay, I can bear witness to that. I have seen when you
were willing to tie his points or brush his cloak, or the like--and to
be treated thus ungratefully--and gudgeoned of the opportunities which
had been given you"--

"It is not for that," said Bletson, waving his hand gracefully. "You do
me wrong, Master Desborough--you do indeed, kind sir--although I know
you meant it not--No, sir--no partial consideration of private interest
prevailed on me to undertake this charge. It was conferred on me by the
Parliament of England, in whose name this war commenced, and by the
Council of State, who are the conservators of England's liberty. And the
chance and serene hope of serving the country, the confidence that
I--and you, Master Desborough--and you, worthy General Harrison--
superior, as I am, to all selfish considerations--to which I am sure you
also, good Colonel Everard, would be superior, had you been named in
this Commission, as I would to Heaven you had--I say, the hope of
serving the country, with the aid of such respectable associates, one
and all of them--as well as you, Colonel Everard, supposing you to have
been of the number, induced me to accept of this opportunity, whereby I
might, gratuitously, with your assistance, render so much advantage to
our dear mother the Commonwealth of England.--Such was my hope--my
trust--my confidence. And now comes my Lord-General's warrant to
dissolve the authority by which we are entitled to act. Gentlemen, I ask
this honourable meeting, (with all respect to his Excellency,) whether
his Commission be paramount to that from which he himself directly holds
his commission? No one will say so. I ask whether he has climbed into
the seat from which the late Man descended, or hath a great seal, or
means to proceed by prerogative in such a case? I cannot see reason to
believe it, and therefore I must resist such doctrine. I am in your
judgment, my brave and honourable colleagues; but, touching my own poor
opinion, I feel myself under the unhappy necessity of proceeding in our
commission, as if the interruption had not taken place; with this
addition, that the Board of Sequestrators should sit, by day, at this
same Lodge of Woodstock, but that, to reconcile the minds of weak
brethren, who may be afflicted by superstitious rumours, as well as to
avoid any practice on our persons by the malignants, who, I am
convinced, are busy in this neighbourhood, we should remove our sittings
after sunset to the George Inn, in the neighbouring borough."

"Good Master Bletson," replied Colonel Everard, "it is not for me to
reply to you; but you may know in what characters this army of England
and their General write their authority. I fear me the annotation on
this precept of the General, will be expressed by the march of a troop
of horse from Oxford to see it executed. I believe there are orders out
for that effect; and you know by late experience, that the soldier will
obey his General equally against King and Parliament."

"That obedience is conditional," said Harrison, starting fiercely up.
"Know'st thou not, Markham Everard, that I have followed the man
Cromwell as close as the bull-dog follows his master?--and so I will
yet;--but I am no spaniel, either to be beaten, or to have the food I
have earned snatched from me, as if I were a vile cur, whose wages are a
whipping, and free leave to wear my own skin. I looked, amongst the
three of us, that we might honestly, and piously, and with advantage to
the Commonwealth, have gained out of this commission three, or it may be
five thousand pounds. And does Cromwell imagine I will part with it for
a rough word? No man goeth a warfare on his own charges. He that serves
the altar must live by the altar--and the saints must have means to
provide them with good harness and fresh horses against the unsealing
and the pouring forth. Does Cromwell think I am so much of a tame tiger
as to permit him to rend from me at pleasure the miserable dole he hath
thrown me? Of a surety I will resist; and the men who are here, being
chiefly of my own regiment--men who wait, and who expect, with lamps
burning and loins girded, and each one his weapon bound upon his thigh,
will aid me to make this house good against every assault--ay, even
against Cromwell himself, until the latter coming--Selah! Selah!"--

"And I," said Desborough, "will levy troops and protect your
out-quarters, not choosing at present to close myself up in garrison"--

"And I," said Bletson, "will do my part, and hie me to town and lay the
matter before Parliament, arising in my place for that effect."

Everard was little moved by all these threats. The only formidable one,
indeed, was that of Harrison, whose enthusiasm, joined with his courage,
and obstinacy, and character among the fanatics of his own principles,
made him a dangerous enemy. Before trying any arguments with the
refractory Major-General, Everard endeavoured to moderate his feelings,
and threw something in about the late disturbances.

"Talk not to me of supernatural disturbances, young man--talk not to me
of enemies in the body or out of the body. Am I not the champion chosen
and commissioned to encounter and to conquer the great Dragon, and the
Beast which cometh out of the sea? Am I not to command the left wing,
and two regiments of the centre, when the Saints shall encounter with
the countless legions of Grog and Magog? I tell thee that my name is
written on the sea of glass mingled with fire, and that I will keep this
place of Woodstock against all mortal men, and against all devils,
whether in field or chamber, in the forest or in the meadow, even till
the Saints reign in the fulness of their glory."

Everard saw it was then time to produce two or three lines under
Cromwell's hand, which he had received from the General, subsequently to
the communication through Wildrake. The information they contained was
calculated to allay the disappointment of the Commissioners. This
document assigned as the reason of superseding the Woodstock Commission,
that he should probably propose to the Parliament to require the
assistance of General Harrison, Colonel Desborough, and Master Bletson,
the honourable member for Littlefaith, in a much greater matter, namely,
the disposing of the royal property, and disparking of the King's forest
at Windsor. So soon as this idea was started, all parties pricked up
their ears; and their drooping, and gloomy, and vindictive looks began
to give place to courteous smiles, and to a cheerfulness, which laughed
in their eyes, and turned their mustaches upwards.

Colonel Desborough acquitted his right honourable and excellent cousin
and kinsman of all species of unkindness; Master Bletson discovered,
that the interest of the state was trebly concerned in the good
administration of Windsor more than in that of Woodstock. As for
Harrison, he exclaimed, without disguise or hesitation, that the
gleaning of the grapes of Windsor was better than the vintage of
Woodstock. Thus speaking, the glance of his dark eye expressed as much
triumph in the proposed earthly advantage, as if it had not been,
according to his vain persuasion, to be shortly exchanged for his share
in the general reign of the Millennium. His delight, in short, resembled
the joy of an eagle, who preys upon a lamb in the evening with not the
less relish, because she descries in the distant landscape an hundred
thousand men about to join battle with daybreak, and to give her an
endless feast on the hearts and lifeblood of the valiant. Yet though all
agreed that they would be obedient to the General's pleasure in this
matter, Bletson proposed, as a precautionary measure, in which all
agreed, that they should take up their abode for some time in the town
of Woodstock, to wait for their new commissions respecting Windsor; and
this upon the prudential consideration, that it was best not to slip one
knot until another was first tied.

Each Commissioner, therefore, wrote to Oliver individually, stating, in
his own way, the depth and height, length and breadth, of his attachment
to him. Each expressed himself resolved to obey the General's
injunctions to the uttermost; but with the same scrupulous devotion to
the Parliament, each found himself at a loss how to lay down the
commission intrusted to them by that body, and therefore felt bound in
conscience to take up his residence at the borough of Woodstock, that he
might not seem to abandon the charge committed to them, until they
should be called to administrate the weightier matter of Windsor, to
which they expressed their willingness instantly to devote themselves,
according to his Excellency's pleasure.

This was the general style of their letters, varied by the
characteristic flourishes of the writers. Desborough, for example, said
something about the religious duty of providing for one's own household,
only he blundered the text. Bletson wrote long and big words about the
political obligation incumbent on every member of the community, on
every person, to sacrifice his time and talents to the service of his
country; while Harrison talked of the littleness of present affairs, in
comparison of the approaching tremendous change of all things beneath
the sun. But although the garnishing of the various epistles was
different, the result came to the same, that they were determined at
least to keep sight of Woodstock, until they were well assured of some
better and more profitable commission.

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